


and dwellings to the lost

by kimaracretak



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Holding Hands, Light Angst, Minor Amilyn Holdo/Leia Organa, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 16:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14937522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: For theswkink prompt: So Jess meets back up with the Resistance and is a bit bummed out that she'll never meet her idol, Luke Skywalker.But Rey has been seeing Luke as Force Ghost every now and then. So seeing how sad Jess is, she offers to help her to see Luke too.Turns out that means a lot of hand holding.





	and dwellings to the lost

**Author's Note:**

> Emerging from the dust  
> The stars become beacons  
>  _And dwellings to the lost_  
>  \- ISON, [Icosahedron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TLd0sQpZdc)

Sometimes, when Rey closes her eyes, she sees people in the Force.

It's not the generalised low-level awareness of other living things that she can never shake, it's not the indefinable Force signatures she _feels_ just as certainly as she feels the brush of someone else's hand against hers, just as new and just as surprising every time it happens.

Rey is certain she's seeing ghosts.

She knows they're in the Force and not in her dreams because it happens when she's awake, too; she knows they're in the Force and not in her head because Doctor Kalonia has said over and over that she's _fine_.

But mostly she knows they're in the Force because Leia and Admiral Holdo see them too.

She hadn't known, the first time it happened, because it was so unlike the connection she had had with Ben. This time, there was no one to talk to, no hand to hand to hold. Just a twist of light, human and unbearably sad and even more unbearably alive but  _not_ and Rey's hand slipped through the figure as if it were one of Jakku's desert mirages.

The second time, the figure had been Master Luke, and it was only a childhood of practised quiet that had kept Rey from screaming, had let her quietly creep over to the bunk Leia shared with Admiral Holdo and wake her up, because Luke was her brother and she needed to _know_.

Luke hadn't said anything that night, just watched them with a strange, sad smile, and after, Leia had explained what little she knew about the ghosts: that Force users who died left echoes of themselves, in the world and in the Force, and sometimes, those left behind who were still connected to the Force could see and hear them still.

Rey isn't sure that makes anything better at all, but the idea that at least some people might never really be gone is nice, in equal measure as it is terrifying.

She doesn't like to talk about the ghosts much. They're a part of life on Hoth just as much as the porgs were a part of life on Ahch-To, and for the most part, they're far easier to ignore. Luke is the most frequent, hanging around in strategy meetings and sitting at the side of Leia and Holdo's bed like he's trying to make up for all the years he wasn't there, and he's the only one she recognises. There's things she wants to say to him - _I guess you believe me now after all, I wish you could still train me, I wish you knew earlier that giving up was the harder thing to do_ \- but she can't make herself form the words.

He knows, anyway. There's too much emotional bleed in the Force for him not to, and Rey isn't prepared for either of them to say what's still between them.

So she doesn't talk to Luke, and if it had been up to her, she probably wouldn't talk _about_ Luke either, and certainly not to anyone who couldn't see him.

Except ... there's Jess. Jess is the exception to a lot of things in Rey's life, recently. The only one who gives her any sort of meaningful advice about flying. The only one who doesn't treat her as if she's some sort of asset to be protected. The only one who _asks_ her about Luke.

It's not really a secret around the base that Jess had idolised Luke. Most of the Resistance did, to some degree, and those who didn't kept their mouths shut when Leia was around. But Jess hadn't just idolised him, she'd believed in him, like Rey once had, and every time Jess says something about Luke - and it's often, now, Luke's sacrifice an unending topic of conversation - Rey wonders if she should say something. But, much like with Luke's ghost, she can never quite make herself.

The decision's made for her one night, when Luke shows up in the hanger bay. She's alone with Jess, the two of them huddled under an ancient A-wing with perpetually leaking fuel lines that Connix had acquired on her last trip offworld. There's little light and no heat in the bay, beyond the sparks from their tools, and Rey's about three minutes away from asking Jess if she wants to pack it in for the night and find somewhere heated to grab a few hours' sleep when she slides out from under the ship to find herself face to kneecap with Luke.

"Why are you here?" she asks, before she can think the better of it.

"Sorry," Luke says, at the same time as Jess follows Rey out and says,"Why is who here?"

Rey groans. Luke has more or less tried to keep his appearances confined to her, Leia, and Holdo, and while he now looks as abashed as a pale blue manifestation of Force energy can, that doesn't change the fact that she has to explain to Jess that she's _talking to a ghost_.

"It's Luke," she says reluctantly, but she's tired and cold and doesn't have the energy to lie about this. "It's ... a Jedi thing."

"I can leave," Luke says, starting to fade around the edges, but Jess' face lights up.

"Luke? Where?" She looks around as if expecting him to pop up out of a cockpit or from behind one of the small stacks of supply crates.

Rey points, feeling somewhat silly, and Luke re-solidifies, as much as he ever does. Jess isn't Force-sensitive, there's no way she'd actually see him, and for all Rey has struggled with - has _hated_ \- the Force sometimes, in the moment she can only feel sorry for Jess.

But Jess stares intently at the space anyway, like she can will Luke into life by her gaze alone. "I want ... can he hear me? Hi."

"Here," Rey says, reaching out and not quite taking Jess' hand. "Can ..."

Luke watches, silent and more patient in death than she's ever seen him. Jess looks down, confused. "Can you what? Oh. Yeah."

She grabs Rey's hand, easy as picking up a drill, and Rey gasps, taken aback once more by how easily _touch_ comes to the pilots.

Comes to Jess.

"Close your eyes," she says, mouth dry, and Luke smiles in what might be approval. "Breathe," she says, as if she were back on the island. She doesn't look to see if Jess is following her instructions, can't quite believe that she's started doing this at all. "He's in the Force, like all living things." Jess' hand is so warm in hers.

"You're doing good," Luke says, and Jess' whole body jerks as if run through with an electric current.

"Life." Jess' voice is hardly a whisper. Rey loosens her awareness and slips deeper into the Force, feels Luke's approval and Jess' glee. "Flight. Death." Her brow furrows.

Rey bites her lip and then, before she can talk herself out of it, turns her hand in Jess' so they're palm to palm, laces their fingers together and _squeezes_. "That's it," she says. "That's ..." She doesn't have words for it. Nothing she had said on the island, or to Ben, had been enough then, how could it possibly be enough to teach Jess now, when Jess was starting from such a different place?

"Connection," Rey finally says. The thready paths that bound all living and all the dead, that kept all things whole. "That's the Force. That's where Luke is now." And then she gives up on words, tries to simply _feel_ like she had with Ben and ask Jess to feel with her.

"It's beautiful," Jess murmurs. Rey studies her smile, Luke forgotten, and - stars, Jess is beautiful too. How had she not realised before? "Is this what you feel like all the time?" Jess asks in wonder.

Rey swallows hard. "No. It's - sometimes it's so much worse." Sometimes there's only death, the balance wronged. But maybe that's what's necessary for moments like this.

Jess opens her eyes, and Rey's taken aback by the depths of the joy she sees there. "I know there's not much more I can do," she says seriously, and, _Luke?_ Rey almost asks, but they're beyond that now. "But I like ... I like this." She raises their joined hands tentatively, and Rey lets her.

"Yeah," she says softly, and she's almost surprised by the truth in the words even as she says them. "I like it too."


End file.
